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Authored by Pat Buchanan via Buchanan.org,

Thursday, in its first military action, the Biden Pentagon sent two U.S. F-15Es to strike targets of Kataib Hezbollah, an Iranian-backed Iraqi militia just inside the eastern border of Syria.

The U.S. strikes were in retaliation for a missile attack on a U.S. base in Irbil, capital of Iraqi Kurdistan, which killed a contractor and wounded a U.S. soldier.

“We’re confident that the target was being used by the same Shia militia that conducted the strikes,” said Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin.

But Democratic Sens. Tim Kaine and Chris Murphy want to know where President Joe Biden got his authority to launch attacks in Syria, where there was no clear or present danger to any U.S. troops.

Days before the U.S. strike, Kataib Hezbollah issued a statement denying any complicity in the Irbil attack: “We absolutely did not target Erbil or the Green Zone and have no knowledge of the group that did.”

Iran has also denied any involvement in the missile attack on the Americans. On a visit to Baghdad, Iran’s Foreign Minister Javad Zarif called for an investigation as to who is initiating the attacks inside Iraq.

“We emphasize the need for the Iraqi government to find the perpetrators of these incidents,” said Zarif.

Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Russian forces in Syria got only four or five minutes’ notice that U.S. planes were on their way to a strike.

Bottom line: Those conducting these attacks on U.S. bases and troops in Iraq, provoking American counterstrikes, seek to ignite a conflict between the U.S. and Iran, and its proxies in Iraq and Syria.

And they are succeeding.

Biden broke with former President Donald Trump on the latter’s decision to pull out of the Iran nuclear deal and impose “maximum pressure” sanctions to compel Iran to negotiate a more restrictive deal. But Biden has yet to reveal his own strategy or goals in dealing with Tehran.

Is he willing to accept a return to the nuclear deal the U.S., U.K., France, Germany, China and Russia negotiated with Iran in 2015? And if that deal is now no longer adequate, how does Biden propose to get Iran to negotiate and agree to a tougher deal?

The leverage we have are the sanctions Trump imposed. If Biden lifts those in return for Iran returning to the terms of the 2015 deal, he surrenders all of his leverage for a new deal covering Tehran’s missile development and aid to Shia militias in Yemen, Syria, Iraq and Lebanon.

But if Biden refuses to lift the Trump sanctions, Iran is likely to revive its nuclear enrichment program, give up on the U.S. and elect a hardline regime this year that could adopt a policy of attacking U.S. interests and personnel across the region until the Americans go home.

Six weeks into his administration, Biden seems in danger of being drawn back indefinitely into the forever wars of the Middle East.

In Afghanistan, under the terms of the peace deal negotiated with the Taliban in 2020, all U.S. troops are to be out of the country by May 1.

Under that deal, not a single U.S. soldier has been lost in combat in the last year.

If the U.S. announces, as some believe is likely, that we are not going to withdraw all forces by May 1, the Taliban, who control half the country, are likely to begin targeting the remaining American troops in the country.

Biden could then be presented with this Hobbesian choice: Flee Afghanistan under fire, or send more U.S. troops to protect those we left behind. Writes William Ruger, a veteran of the war and Trump’s nominee to be ambassador to Afghanistan:

“Keeping our troops in Afghanistan beyond the promised deadline is pushing them back in the Taliban’s cross hairs and indefinitely continuing an … unwinnable war, which has already cost more than $2 trillion and more than 2,400 American lives …

“Anything less than a full drawdown means that Afghanistan will become President Biden’s war. He will have to own the predictably terrible consequences of continuing a war that can’t be won.”

Looking at our 20 years of military intervention in the Middle East, since Osama bin Laden drew us in by bringing down the twin towers and hitting the Pentagon, what is on the asset side of our balance sheet?

Two decades of fighting in Afghanistan, yet the Taliban enemy we ousted in 2001 seems today destined to retake power when we depart.

Pro-Iranian Shia militia dominate the Iraq that we sent an army to liberate from Saddam Hussein. In Yemen and Syria, we bear major moral responsibility for two of the worst humanitarian disasters of the 21st century, and we are facing strategic defeats in both theaters.

In Libya, whose regime we helped to overthrow, Turks and Russians are fighting for control.

And China, which stayed out of all these wars we started — or into which we plunged — has prospered in these 20 years as few other nations in modern history.

Manhattan’s luxury condo frenzy petered out a few years ago. Owners are taking realized losses as they offload properties at steep losses. 

A prime example of this is the pending deal at 551 W. 21st St., where two units listed for a combined $26 million found a buyer after a couple of years on and off the market, according to Bloomberg, who cited data from brokerage Olshan Realty. The owner initially acquired the property in 2016 for $31.3 million and then attempted to flip it for $40 million the following year. 

With no success, the owner is expected to realize a 17% loss on the properties once the transaction is completed. 

Manhattan’s luxury condo market peaked a few years ago and has since developed into a nightmare for sellers. Massive supply is quickly eroding values as inventory builds. In early 2020, half of all new luxury condo units constructed after 2015 in the borough were unsold. A confluence of macroeconomic headwinds, as well as SALT deduction caps and transfer taxes, cooled the market. Then came the big bad pandemic that wreaked even more havoc in the borough. 

Donna Olshan, president of the brokerage, said sellers in the market have no interest in sticking around in “New York if they’re not using the asset or if the asset isn’t giving a return.” 

Olshan said a deal at 80 Columbus Circle for a 74th-story condo recently listed at $25 million. The seller combined two apartments in the tower, one unit purchased in 2011 for $17.5 million, and the other unit (next door) purchased in 2014 for $18 million. 

There is some good news in the luxury real estate market – after writing about the downturn for 18 months and the plunge following the pandemic, the decline in prices has brought buyers to the table. 

With Mayor Bill De Blasio doing everything he possibly can to drive both businesses (like Goldman Sachs) and individual citizens out of the city, the effects of his colossal mismanagement and general cluelessness have come at a loss for some wealthy elites who bought luxury condos in the last several years, thinking they could flip the unit(s) for a quick buck. Many have transformed into bagholders, or recently, they want out and are willing to take realized losses. 

By Brian Straight of Modern Shipper

Many golfers wish they could reach for a cold drink moments after hooking their seventh straight tee shot into the woods. The lack of electricity and staffing issues prevent golf courses from offering this level of customer service on each hole. If you are lucky, your local course may have a vending machine at the ninth hole.

But that could soon change. At Sun City Country Club in Sun City, Arizona, a significant development took place this week that may open up the opportunity for food and beverage delivery while on the course, leading to increased revenue opportunities for country clubs and more convenience for golfers.

“Successfully demonstrating our drone delivery system at Sun City Country Club was the first crucial step in advancing our efforts to produce turnkey drone solutions capable of addressing real-world commercial applications on and off the golf course,” Michael Drozd, CEO of AgEagle Aerial Systems, said.

Drone provider AgEagle partnered with Valqari, a Chicago-based startup that is building a drone delivery “mailbox” that allows drones to deliver packages directly into a safe and secure box.

The companies demonstrated their combined solution at Sun City. A drone picked up a package with beverages at the Valqari Drone Delivery Station outside the clubhouse restaurant and delivered that package to a second delivery station located on the course.

“Sun City Country Club provided us with the ideal venue for conducting this initial pilot test. We greatly appreciate their enthusiasm for the prospect of enhancing the overall golfing experience for their patrons through drone-enabled on-demand delivery of food and refreshments to our secure Drone Delivery Stations,” Ryan Walsh, Valqari founder and CEO, said. “This demonstration of AgEagle and Valqari technologies shows just one of the many ways our joint system can be used to optimize fast and secure deliveries for industries ranging from hospitality to commercial deliveries and beyond.”

Once the drone released the package and departed, the Drone Delivery Station was activated, relocating the package from the top of the station to a lower compartment for the golfer to retrieve the order.

“We were very pleased to have Sun City serve as the site for the AgEagle and Valqari pilot demo,” Jamey Lewis, Sun City Country Club manager, said. “We were duly impressed with their game-changing approach to delivering drinks, food and snacks to golfers and can envision this system being integrated into our course, and perhaps courses worldwide, in the future. It really does take customer experience and convenience to an entirely new level.”

Valqari’s system allows the creation of an order through an app. A box is inserted into a slot in the Drone Delivery Station. A global positioning system navigates the drone to the landing pad, where an “elevator system” raises the package to the drone to be attached.

As the drone approaches the destination, it signals the Delivery Station to open the storage compartment, lowers itself in and releases the package onto a pad. The package is then lowered into the correct compartment, where it is locked and secured until pickup.

The recipient receives a notification the package is ready for pickup. Upon arrival at the box, the recipient must verify his or her identity and select the proper package for retrieval. The slot will then open once that is all confirmed.

Incoming SEC Chair Gary Gensler has said at the U.S. Senate confirmation hearing for the nominees to lead the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau that he’s going to be examining the payment for order flow business model closely.

He committed to looking at the business model that has been at the center of the GameStop controversy for the past several weeks, according to Bloomberg on Tuesday. Critics of the system (including Zero Hedge) have pointed to how frontrunning could be prevalent as a result of the model. This ostensibly could result in clients of zero commission brokerages not getting the best possible execution on trades. 

Gensler also said he’s going to scrutinize trading apps that encourage “gamification” of trading, according to Yahoo. He is specifically looking at “how to protect investors using trading applications with behavioral prompts designed to incentivize traders to trade more.”

Gensler also said he will try to rid cryptocurrency markets of fraud and manipulation, in what would likely be a herculean undertaking for his administration. 

Meanwhile, according to Bloomberg, CFPB nominee Rohit Chopra said he “backs the U.S. making its own real-time payment system to give consumers faster access to and better control over their own dollars.”

Gensler is reported to be worth up to $119 million, as we noted last month.  Gensler was previously the chairman of the CFTC and a partner at Goldman Sachs. He disclosed his net worth as part of disclosures he had to file with the Office of Government Ethics last month. A majority of his money was made at Goldman, where he joined in the late 1970’s after graduating from the University of Pennsylvania. He became one of the youngest partners in Goldman Sachs history. 

Recall, we wrote about Gensler’s nomination in mid-January. 

His arrival will likely be a stark difference from the last 4 years of Jay Clayton, as Gensler’s resume includes going to war with major financial titans when he was head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission – and winning. Financial lobbyists sometimes simply called him “the enemy” during the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act battle. 

Justin Slaughter, a consultant at Mercury Strategies, said: “The sheriff is coming to the preeminent financial regulator in the world. It means regulation and enforcement are about to get much tougher.”

Less than three weeks after JPM declared that a new commodity supercycle has begun, it is Goldman’s turn to remind clients that it was the first to predict a secular rise in commodities, only instead of using the “supercycle” cliche, Goldman calls it a “new structural bull market in commodities.”

Commenting on the dramatic outperformance of commodities in 2021, Goldman chief commodity strategist Jeffrey Currie writes that “not only have oil, metal and agriculture prices rallied ytd, but structural impediments on supply have created sustainable deficits, in our view, giving commodities broad-based positive carry. Accordingly, we recently raised our oil, metal and grain forecasts and lowered our gold forecasts, which in aggregate suggests a 12m commodity index return of 15.5%. Further, commodity diversification is back as returns have decoupled from other asset classes.”

The kicker: “As we have argued since October last year, we believe this is the beginning of a new structural bull market in commodities, and with every market but cocoa and zinc in a deficit we maintain our conviction in this view.”

In light of this it’s hardly surprising that Goldman still believes that “commodities remain the best inflation hedge” but there is a twist: amid widespread concerns that the coming inflationary spike is cost-push driven and will therefore fizzle shortly amid lack of widespread demand to keep prices sustainably higher, Currie argues that “despite commodities leading the reflation trade, we believe it is not about cost-push inflation but rather demand-pull inflation.” Elaborating on the difference, the commodity strategist notes that “cost-push inflation episodes, which are very rare, are supply-side events that are both very transient in nature and self-defeating by creating a recession and/or supply response such as the oil shocks of the 1970s” not to mention the $140 price in oil hit just months before Lehman collapsed in 2008. Instead, Goldman sees “supply across all of these markets chasing demand higher but not catching up, leading to demand pull inflationary pressures, even in oil.”

And the punchline: “commodities are the crucial link between growing demand, a weaker dollar and inflation, which is why they have been statistically the best hedge against inflation.”

And while contrary to JPM, which believes that oil will be the biggest beneficiary from the current supercycle, Goldman sees muted gains in Brent and WTI which it expects to peak in Q3 at $75 and $72 respectively, the bank is positively euphoria on industrial metals such as copper, nickel, zinc and aluminum, expecting all to keep rising for the foreseeable future.

As usual, we would beg to differ with Goldman and while we too anticipated strong commodity gains for the next 6-9 months, the longer-term is far more cloud if for no other reason than China’s all important reflationary credit impulse has now peaked…

…  and will have adverse consequences on all inflation-linked assets over the medium-term.

Just yesterday we saw the adverse impact of this critical impulse as China’s latest mfg PMIs dropped to a nine month low.

Alas, Goldman glosses over the impact China plays on commodity prices and instead in addressing his latest price forecasts, Currie writes that “strong fundamentals, not money flows, drive prices.”

Our recent upgrades of 6m oil to $75/bbl from $65/bbl, 12m copper to $10,500/t from $10,000/t and downgrade of our gold price target to $2000/toz from $2300/toz were fundamentally driven. Lockdowns have driven a wedge between the consumption of services and goods, generating additional demand from both households and governments looking to stimulate activity while minimizing the virus spread. Backwardation supports our view that this was fundamental and not money flows, reinforced by the fact oil length is near normal and commodities exposure relative to total AUM remains under-invested, even relative to 2008.

Goldman then goes back to its most controversial assumption, namely that rising prices are the result of demand-pull not cost-push trends, which explains the key role commodities play by being at the forefront of the macro reflation trade – and are also critical in restarting the reserve recycling flow (better known as petrodollar in the case of oil) – and are therefore the best hedge to inflation:

In recent weeks reflation has become top of mind as inflation expectations have recovered from the recent pandemic lows and are now close to the Fed’s implicit AIT target of 2.25%. Commodities have sat at the heart of this reflation story and we believe the key here is that this reflation push is demand driven, not cost push inflation, despite being centered on rising commodity prices. Cost-push inflation episodes, which are very rare, are supply-side events that are both very transient in nature and self-defeating by creating a recession and/or supply response such as the oil shocks of the 1970s. Instead, we see supply across all of these markets chasing demand higher but not catching up, leading to demand pull inflationary pressures, even in oil. Further, commodities remain the best hedge against inflation (Exhibit 10), in our view, as they remain key inputs into households consumption bundles, and therefore the components of the CPI. Indeed, commodities are the crucial link between growing demand, a weaker dollar and inflation. Commodities are mostly produced in emerging markets, leading rising prices to enhance their current account surpluses. These surpluses end up as additional dollar reserves at EM central banks, which are then required to diversify these holdings into other DM currencies, selling their excess dollars and driving down the dollar, a process known as reserve recycling. In addition, excess reserves raise the availability of credit in these regions, further spurring demand growth, commodity prices, and dollar depreciation, all of which act as a tailwind for prices.

Having recently extolled the virtues of copper which it views as the most attractive commodity (not least because it anticipates a historic supply shortage in coming years), Goldman then spends some time to justify its oil bullishness which prompted it to hike its Q2 and Q3 oil price projections by $10, referring to the to backwardation in the strip as the primary drive for crude outperformance:

As a result of a faster-than-expected rebalancing, we now forecast Brent prices will reach $70/bbl in 2Q21 and $75/bbl in 3Q ($10 above our prior forecasts). We expect this rally to be driven by both rising long-dated prices as well as a sustained steep level of backwardation driven by tightening that will likely unwind the entire OECD surplus by summer. As the market reflects the expected level of inventories two to three months ahead, we see this additional level of backwardation being brought forward from 3Q to 2Q. Meanwhile, the non-OPEC supply response has been neutralized by a collapse in energy capex globally as well as a paradigm shift in the shale industry towards FCF generative business models that should generate shareholder returns as US shale producers are sharply disciplined if they raise capex plans. Though JPOCA-related risks to Iranian production remain, we continue to believe it will not derail the tight oil market as there remains work to be done before a renewed agreement can be reached, while OPEC+ – Russia in particular – is likely to help accommodate a ramp up in Iranian production.

But what about the coming OPEC+ meeting where member states, and certainly Saudi Arabia, are widely expected to boost oil output? In response, Goldman writes that it expects that even a 4.4mb/d rise in OPEC production would leave a 1.35mb/d deficit in the summer, leaving headroom for faster-than-expected production ramp ups before the oil rebalancing is derailed.

Finally, here is a snapshot of Goldman’s current commodity trade recommendations:

Amazon quietly changed its new smartphone app logo that some on social media say resembles Adolf Hitler’s toothbrush mustache. The first redesign was released in January; and without a press release announcement, the second redesign was just released. 

UK Technology Editor at the Guardian, Alex Hern tweeted:

“lmao I completely missed that amazon quietly tweaked its new icon to make it look… less like hitler.” 

Hern said, “unsurprisingly, they did not send out a press release to announce the second redesign.” 

Amazon tweaked the app’s icon following customer feedback after its initial rollout in January. 

Social media users disturbingly tweeted how the app looked, well, in their eyes, like Hitler’s toothbrush mustache: 

“Amazon’s new app logo be lookin like they’re the THIRD most downloaded in the ‘Reich’ section,”  one person said on Twitter, referring to the Nazis. 

“It’s not just a ripped scotch tape, it’s a ripped scotch tape that has a similar shape and is right on top of a smiling mouth. Looks like a happy little cardboard Adolf to me,” another person said. 

In an emailed response, Amazon told NYPost that it “is always exploring new ways to delight our customers.” 

“We designed the new icon to spark anticipation, excitement, and joy when customers start their shopping journey on their phone, just as they do when they see our boxes on their doorstep,” a company spokesperson told The Post in an email.

One person who was unhappy about “cancel culture” said: 

“I see it as people are stupid. And those people are the one that keep adding fuel to the fire. They are see hate in everything they look at because they are shitty people” 

Meanwhile, someone said:

Me: “How silly! That Amazon logo looks nothing like Hitler.”
Also me: “The UPS logo, on the other hand…” https://t.co/C7R9F3Q4Qz pic.twitter.com/fhFBAW4gcl

— Angus Johnston (@studentactivism) March 2, 2021

For more absurdity, Dr. Seuss has now been “canceled” over racist imagery (read: here). 

Authored by Michael Snyder via TheMostImportantNews.com,

Have you noticed that UFO sightings have been in the news a lot lately?  Even in the midst of all the other big events that are happening, evidence of mysterious objects flying through our skies continues to make headlines. 

In particular, what one American Airlines pilot says that he saw is really shaking a lot of people up.  According to a radio transmission that was intercepted from American Airlines Flight 2292, a pilot claims that he witnessed “a long cylindrical object that almost looked like a cruise missile type of thing” fly at very high speed right over the top of his aircraft…

The cockpit audio from American Airlines flight 2292 from New Mexico to Phoenix sounded like something out of a Sci-Fi movie.

“Do you have any targets up here? We just had something go right over the top of us,” a pilot can be heard saying.

“I hate to say this but it looked like a long cylindrical object that almost looked like a cruise missile type of thing moving really fast right over the top of us.”

This got so much attention that officials at American Airlines were forced to address it.  They put out a statement in which they confirmed that the radio transmission did actually come from American Airlines Flight 2292…

American Airlines put out a statement, saying, “Following a debrief with our Flight Crew and additional information received, we can confirm this radio transmission was from American Airlines Flight 2292 on Feb. 21.”

And the FBI has also publicly announced that it is “aware of the reported incident”, but the agency has not provided any additional details.

Of course this sort of thing is happening a lot these days.  In fact, the U.S. Sun has just put out an article documenting “a string of strange incidents involving passenger jets” in recent months.

In the old days, the U.S. government would go to great lengths to deny that anything unusual was happening in our skies.  But over the past couple of years, government officials have started to change their tune.

For example, last year the Pentagon released footage of Navy fighter pilots encountering a UFO…

In late April, the Department of Defense released footage of Navy fighter pilots encountering something “unidentifiable.” The black and white videos are grainy and show small objects flying across the in-flight cameras of Navy fighter pilots.

This footage had already been circulating on the internet. By releasing it, the Department of Defense confirmed the videos’ authenticity—and that it didn’t know what they showed.

Much more importantly, the Defense Intelligence Agency recently released documents that admit that the U.S. has been testing wreckage from UFO crashes…

THE Pentagon has admitted to holding and testing wreckage from UFO crashes in a bombshell Freedom of Information letter, shared with The Sun.

Researcher Anthony Bragalia wrote to the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) requesting details of all UFO material, which they hold and results of any tests they had been carrying out on it.

After all this time, why would the federal government finally admit this?

Are they trying to mentally prepare us for something?

According to the 154 pages of test results that were released, some of the materials that have been retrieved from UFOs possess “extraordinary capabilities”…

In the response, shared with The Sun, the DIA released 154 pages of test results that includes reports on a mysterious “memory” metal called Nitinol, which remembers its original shape when folded.

Bragalia said it was a “stunning admission” from the US government and the documents reveal that some of the retrieved debris possesses “extraordinary capabilities” including the potential to make things invisible or even slow down the speed of light.

Obviously the entities that are operating these craft are highly advanced, and they appear to have technology that we do not currently have.

But are they friend or foe?

Statements that were recently made by someone that was a top official in Israel’s space program for 30 years have sparked a lot of speculation…

Haim Eshed, who headed Israel’s space security programs for 30 years, has been in the spotlight in recent days, after claiming that aliens exist, that Israel and the US have long been in contact with them, and that Donald Trump was going to blab but the extraterrestrial beings of the “Galactic Federation” stopped him.

Eshed said aliens conduct experiments on Earth, and there is a joint base underground on Mars where they collaborate with American astronauts. “They asked that we don’t publicize they are here because humanity isn’t ready,” he said.

If Haim Eshed is to be believed, the “aliens” are already here and the U.S. is already cooperating with them.

That makes it sound like we don’t have anything to be concerned about.

But other experts have come to a completely different conclusion.

Temple University history professor David Jacobs has been studying the alien abduction phenomenon for decades, and he believes that these “aliens” have a deeply malevolent agenda…

According to Jacobs, his lifelong research into alien abduction has forced him to the conclusion that an alien race has been implementing a clandestine and sinister program to create an alien-human hybrid race.

The program has now reached an advanced stage and alien hybrids are now being secretly integrated into human society. The alien hybrids, according to Jacobs, are able to live secretly in human society because they are superficially identical with humans.

There is so much speculation about these beings, and it can be very difficult to separate truth from fiction.

But as the number of sightings continues to rise, it is becoming clear that something very strange really is happening in our skies.

And after decades of very strict secrecy, the U.S. government is now openly admitting that UFOs exist.

Many people are looking forward to the day when we can openly welcome direct contact with our “space brothers”, but I do not believe that these are “friendly aliens from another planet”.

In fact, they are not our friends at all.

Unfortunately, our entertainment industry has spent decades preparing the general public to embrace visitors from “another world”, and I expect that is precisely what would happen.

We are moving into such a chaotic chapter in human history, and a time may come when intervention by “aliens” will be greatly welcomed by a human race that is deeply suffering.

The truth is out there, but as far as UFOs are concerned, most people are going to continue to believe whatever it is that they want to believe.

*  *  *

Michael’s new book entitled “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.

As expected on Tuesday shortly after the European Union announced sanctions against top Russian officials accused in connection to the Navalny case, the United States rolled out with its own sanctions in a coordinated effort.

“Today, as part of a robust inter-agency response to the poisoning and imprisonment of opposition figure Alexei Navalny, the Treasury Department is designating seven senior members of the Russian government,” the Biden administration announced Tuesday afternoon.

In particular the US Treasury penalties target seven Russian government officials who stand broadly accused of orchestrating the alleged ‘nerve agent poisoning’ of anti-Kremlin activist Alexei Navalny, who since his return to Russia from Germany has been sentenced by a Moscow court to 2.5 years in prison stemming from a prior embezzlement case. 

“We join the EU in condemning Alexei Navalny’s poisoning as well as his arrest and imprisonment by the Russian government,” Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen stated.

Russia is further banned from receiving any financial assistance from any and all US departments or agencies for a minimum of one year. An official State Department press release highlighted Russia’s bio-chemical weapons program in relation to Navalny:

“Today, the Secretary of State determined that the government of the Russian Federation has used a chemical weapon against its own nationals“, the release said. “As a result, the following sanctions will be imposed: Denial to Russia of any credit, credit guarantees, or other financial assistance by any department, agency, or instrumentality of the United States government, including the Export-Import Bank of the United States.”

And according to further details:

Senior administration officials, speaking to reporters on a conference call, said the sanctions also include export controls on 14 parties — nine Russian, three German and one Swiss, and three Russian government research institutes, most of which are believed to be involved in the production of chemical and biological agents.

Today, the U.S. imposed sanctions on Russia for attempting to assassinate Aleksey Navalny with a novichok nerve agent. Any use of chemical weapons is unacceptable. We stand with our EU and UK partners to counter Russia’s actions and in calling for Mr. Navalny’s release.

— Secretary Antony Blinken (@SecBlinken) March 2, 2021

Reuters lists the following officials targeted: “Among those blacklisted by the Treasury were Andrei Yarin, the chief of the Kremlin’s domestic policy directorate; Alexander Bortnikov, the Director of the Federal Security Service (FSB); and deputy ministers of defense Alexei Krivoruchko and Pavel Popov, among others, according to a statement.”

The EU sanctions similarly targeted “high profile individuals” – which includes travel bans against select Russian security officials and the freezing of their assets held in Europe. 

Meanwhile, the State Department suggested there’s more penalties to come…

What was announced today certainly not the totality of US action against #Russia for its human rights abuses, says @StateDeptSpox. pic.twitter.com/wVGQg4fLte

— Steve Herman (@W7VOA) March 2, 2021

Having heard from The White House Chief of Staff earlier that they would “fight their hearts out” to get Neera Tanden confirmed as OMB Director and White press Secretary Jen Psaki that Neera Tanden has “wide spectrum of support”, it would appear tonight that the fight is over and the support was not wide enough.

Chris Wallace: When will the WH pull the nomination of Neera Tanden to be the Budget director?

WH Press Sec. Jen Psaki: We remain committed to fighting our hearts out for Neera Tanden. We believe she is the right person … pic.twitter.com/aqT3Nfexif

— The Recount (@therecount) February 28, 2021

The Washington Post reports that The White House plans to withdraw the nomination of Neera Tanden as director of the Office of Management and Budget as early as Tuesday evening, according to people familiar with the matter.

As we previously detailed, Tanden was facing bipartisan opposition from senators due to past comments she made on her Twitter feed.

As a reminder, here is what Glenn Greenwald wrote of the Tanden nomination in November:

The announcement that Joe Biden intends to nominate Neera Tanden as his Director of the Office of Management and Budget — a critical position overseeing U.S. economic and regulatory policy — triggered a wide range of mockery, indignation and disgust from both the left and the right. That should not be surprising: though a thoroughly mediocre and ordinary D.C. swamp creature from the perspective of both ideology and competence, Tanden’s uniquely unhinged, venomous, corrupt and pathologically dishonest conduct as a Clinton Family and DNC apparatchik and President of the corporatist-and-despot-funded Center for American Progress (CAP) has earned her a list of enemies far longer and more impressive than her accomplishments.

…

When news of her appointment broke, many of the journalists and activists she has spent years abusing, slandering, and lying about instantly stepped forward to compile just some of her worst political and behavioral lowlights. And some preliminary signs emerged that she might encounter difficulty in obtaining the Senate confirmation needed for her to assume this position. The Communications Director for GOP Senator John Cornyn of Texas announced that “Tanden stands zero chance of being confirmed” by the Senate.

Former Sanders campaign aide David Sirota hypothesized that “it is not a coincidence that they are putting Neera Tanden — the single biggest, most aggressive Bernie Sanders critic in the United States of America — specifically at OMB while Sanders is Senate Budget Committee ranking/chair.”

Tanden, president of the John Podesta-founded Center for American Progress, saw her nomination began to unravel when Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.V.) pulled his support, citing the need for comity.

The Hill reports that even before news of Tanden’s withdrawal, rumors had begun circulating on possible replacements, including former National Economic Council Director Gene Sperling, former chief of staff to California Gov. Gavin Newsom, and Biden’s current nominee for deputy OMB director, Shalanda Young.

So no $15 Minimum Wage and no Neera Tanden?

That awkward moment where a reporter asks Biden Press Sec Jen Psaki why the Biden Administration is fighting harder for Neera Tanden’s confirmation than it is to raise the minimum wage. Briahna Joy Gray @briebriejoy & I break it down. https://t.co/ehnoy2cRRm pic.twitter.com/qYi1RHadrx

— Katie Halper (@kthalps) March 2, 2021

 

Authored by Frank Miele via RealClearPolitics.com,

Over at MSNBC, they are calling those who think like me “Dead-Enders,” people who will follow Donald Trump into the bunker and die with him. It’s supposed to be an insult. That’s all right. I’ve been called worse — domestic terrorist, white supremacist, racist. None of those slurs are accurate, but they sure do hurt.

Which is the point.

My smart-beyond-her-ninth-grade-education mother warned me about the power of political name-calling a long time ago. Back in the 1960s when I was a precocious ninth-grader myself, my mom told me never to join the Students for a Democratic Society, a left-wing antiwar group that kept sending me mail asking for a donation. If you do send them money, my mom said, then you are going to have a target on your back. Sometime, maybe years later, powerful people will come after you, call you a communist, and try to punish you.

She knew all about name-calling because she had lived through the Red Scare of the 1950s. People lost their careers for joining the wrong group, for attending the wrong rally — for having the wrong beliefs. Lives were ruined. Blacklists kept people in fear. It was hard to believe for a young man like me who loved his country that there would ever come a time again when Americans could be marginalized and have their livelihoods threatened just for taking a political stand.

But here we are again. Today, you can’t be a Trump conservative or, heaven forbid, a Trump Republican without having not just your patriotism questioned, but your very sanity.

Over on CNN, folks like me are targeted as the Republicans trying to “roll back your right to vote.” John King, who was once a real journalist, should know better. But there he is, telling the useful idiots who watch CNN that defending against election fraud is somehow an attack on voting rights. This kind of loose talk legitimizes attacks on people like me since he states as a fact that we are working to undermine democracy.

Although I used to watch CNN and MSNBC on a regular basis, it’s pointless now unless I want to find out exactly how the left is gaslighting the American public. There is no news anymore; there is just the 24/7 propaganda war aimed at conservatives. King says that Republicans around the country are only working to reform the voting process because of what he calls “the big Trump lie about massive 2020 fraud.”

Talk about a big lie! The most tiresome one promoted by the Fake News Media these days is that Donald Trump is some sort of political Svengali who has a magic power over certain naive voters or mindless jackal Republican officials and can manipulate them into doing his will.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Trump is not a leader in the traditional sense of inspiring his supporters to believe as he does, but rather someone who gains his strength and power from his ability to reflect the beliefs of those whom he leads. If you want to know why I am a Trump Republican, it is because only Trump has consistently and effectively put into words the values and beliefs I was armed with long before he appeared on the scene. He hasn’t always been able to effectuate those values in policy changes, but I’m willing to forgive him his failures because he — like me — has been the victim of cultural and political elites who despise him. They have proven they would stop at nothing to bring him to his knees, so it was no surprise to me that they rigged the election against him by changing voting rules and then blamed him for the chaos that resulted.

The canard of the second Trump impeachment was that the 45th U.S. president had incited an insurrection against the government of the United States by promoting the supposedly “baseless” conspiracy theory that Democrats had stolen the election. That presumes that his rather lackluster speech at the Ellipse on the morning of Jan. 6 had the capacity to inspire a rebellion, which it didn’t, but more importantly it deprives those who recklessly entered the U.S. Capitol of their agency and responsibility in breaking the law. It also assumes that people like me who studied the evidence and concluded that there was indeed fraud in the 2020 vote are dupes of the Great and Powerful Oz, er, Trump.

That mistake has been repeated throughout Trump’s candidacy and presidency — over-estimating Trump’s persuasiveness and under-estimating the savvy of his audience. It wasn’t Trump who shaped the conservative movement in America, but rather the conservative movement that shaped Trump like Pygmalion into the political embodiment of heartland American values: free speech, law and order, good jobs, secure borders, equality but not equity.

If some fair-minded historian wants to make an honest attempt at writing the story of the Trump movement, that is where they should begin — with the understanding that Trump was called into being by necessity. His genius, if you will, was recognizing the spirit of the times and riding it into the White House.

As one of the earliest media supporters of Donald Trump’s candidacy in 2015, I had the good fortune to play a minor role in catalyzing the marriage between Trump’s dynamic personality and what remained of the Tea Party movement that had nearly fizzled out since 2010. It was not by accident that the first three collections of my columns were published under the general title of “Why We Needed Trump.” There was never any doubt in my mind that no one besides Donald Trump could galvanize the untapped potential of the forgotten men and women of America and overthrow the corrupt governing system that eventually became known as “the Swamp.”

It turned out that he didn’t do it. The Swamp was bigger and dirtier than anyone suspected, but you know what? So far, the Swamp hasn’t won completely, It hasn’t vanquished Trump and it hasn’t convinced the Deplorables to go away and hide. The Russia hoax? He beat it. Ukraine impeachment sham? He beat it. Impeachment 2.0? He beat it. Yep, the Democrats are right. He’s a fighter. He doesn’t just curl up and surrender like Liz Cheney and Mitch McConnell and Ben Sasse and Nikki Haley.

If you want to know why I’m a Dead-Ender, a Trump Republican to the end, it’s this: No one else will fight like hell for the country I grew up in, the country I believe in, and the country that my forefathers died for. Trump may not be perfect; neither am I. But he damn sure didn’t have to hypnotize me or manipulate me or mislead me to get me on his side. I’ll confess: He had me at “Make America Great Again.”